The only 'revelation' from these documents so far is our 'intelligence' over there is ridiculously fantastic, and stupid beyond belief.

Oh and the Taliban has heat seeking missiles.

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"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing." - Charles Bukowski

I agree with Dr M - nothing that we don't already know. Wikileaks had been in the news for a while, but I think this only made headlines now because of the huge amount of files just leaked.

But the heat-seeking missiles and drone crashes/dangerous missions to recover them before the Taliban does are interesting details of the war. The founder still seems to be claiming to be holding much more sensitive files. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

My initial reaction was "nothing all that new" as well. But I haven't read all 90,000 pages. There could very well be some sensitive stuff in there that would be newsworthy and practical to our enemy. Not the juicy stuff we all like to read over here, but the stuff that makes their lonely nights a little brighter as they plot to kill our men and women.

"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing." - Charles Bukowski

Everyone knew it would happen, but this is confirmation straight from the Taliban.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Newsweek

Taliban Says It Will Target Names Exposed by WikiLeaks
Militants were alerted to the leaked documents, which reveal details of informants, by news reports.

The U.S. military has already accused WikiLeaks of having "the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family" on its hands after leaking 92,000 classified documents. The Taliban has now confirmed it is poring through the documents, and intends to hunt down and punish any suspected spies named.

Britain's Channel 4 News interviewed a Taliban spokesperson named Zabihullah Mujahid by telephone. "We are studying the report," he said, referring to the documents, available online, some containing the names, tribes, and family information of Afghan informants.

"We knew about the spies and people who collaborate with U.S. forces," he continued. "We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the U.S. If they are U.S. spies, then we know how to punish them."

The Taliban has recently pursued a policy of intimidating those who cooperate with the NATO forces in an attempt to undermine efforts at governance. Many local officials have been killed, and most have been threatened. The militant group is known to execute informants, reports Channel 4, by hanging, beheading, and shooting. It has even, on one recent occasion, strapped "two alleged traitors to explosives before detonating them in public."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen condemned WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange yesterday. "Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing," Mullen said, according to Reuters. "But the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family."

Gates told reporters that trust between the Afghan people and the U.S. military had been breached. "I spent most of my life in the intelligence business, where the sacrosanct principle is protecting your sources," he said. "It seems to me that, as a result of this massive breach of security, we have considerable repair work to do in terms of reassuring people and rebuilding trust, because they clearly—people are going to feel at risk."

Many media organizations have avoided linking to the WikiLeaks site and have redacted information in their reports. But Mujahid told Channel 4 that the Taliban had begun investigating the leaked information after being alerted by news stories.

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"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing." - Charles Bukowski

To begin with, WikiLeaks is not very good at explaining itself. Julian Assange is opposed to (almost?) all official secrets. Unless you believe there is no such thing as a threat to national security, that is a difficult position to defend -- but it does have an appealing innocence. The problem is, WikiLeaks isn't innocent. It is not a disinterested conduit for information. The "Collateral Murder" video, its previous hit, was edited to heighten the drama, and given a sensational title. The aim was not mere disclosure but impact. I think that material did belong in the public domain: disturbed as I was to read that the thing had been edited, it was something that people needed to see. But WikiLeaks is not just acting as a channel for any and all improperly suppressed information. It has axes to grind. That calls into question its judgment about what can properly be made public and how.

Judgment does need to be exercised, as WikiLeaks itself insists: it has held back thousands of documents from the Afghanistan archive pending "harm minimization". The question is, who do I trust to decide what should be secret, the Pentagon or Julian Assange? The answer is neither.

It's a decent editorial. Click link to see the whole thing.

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"One reads so as not to believe everything one reads." -- Aaron Haspel